I have two nodes running BBHN v1. Both of them are standard configuration, except that both have static IP addresses on the WAN (wired) port to my home LAN. Only one will usually be connected to the LAN. I did this to facilitate upgrading because I ran into the problem, below.

What I want to do is to connect to the node on my home LAN to use the mesh.

If I connect my computer to one of the LAN ports on the node, reset my PC IP address, and then connect to localnode:8080, I get to the node status page. From the mesh status page I click on the link to the other node and get to its status page, where I can make changes.  This works hte same way on both nodes.  This is the expected behavior.

However, if I connect to one (either) of the nodes through the home LAN be connecting to 192.168.1.100:8080 (or .101), I connect to the node and can look at lin status, remote noedes, etc, and can administer the node.  But if I clik on the link to the other node, it cannot find it. It looks for kg1l-100:8080, which fails dns lookup.

My question" Other than changing the name of my workgroup (Windows) to local.mesh (or what ever it is), is there any way to to setup Windows 7 so I can connect from my home LAN and still be able to connect to remote nodes?

That's part of the normal function of BBHN. If you want to administer the nodes, you can do one of two things: Setup a BBHN node in AP mode, or plug your computer into the LAN port of a node.

If you wanted to, you could also SSH into the 192.168.1.10x node, install elinks onto the node (ipkg update && ipkg install elinks), and then type in the ssh terminal "elinks http://<page>:8080/" to administer the nodes connected to the BBHN network. This method does not like web buttons, so it is somewhat limited. You'll also have to know the http://*:8080/cgi-bin/<page> location to navigate from some pages to some pages.

Even changing your workgroup to local.mesh isn't going to fix the issue. Your PC is not going to connect to the DNS of the mesh to resolve the names. I'm not even sure that fixing the DNS to resolve the 10.x.x.x IPs will work, since your windows machine is not going to route 10.x.x.x to the mesh node.

You can try entering your nodes in your 'hosts' file. Your hosts file is at 'C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc'. Entries need to look like:

10.5.5.222                     node1name
10.23.94.191                   node2name

You will need one line for each node.

First, let me say I connected my pc directly to one of the nodes (which was connected to my home network).  I could use the Internet through my home network router (gateway).  I could also connect to the remote node by clicking on the link.  Unfortunately, the home printer is connected to that pc. No one else could use the printer. I put my pc back on my home network.

I found an article on the OHIO PACKET website (http://ohiopacket.org/index.php/Integrating_HSMM-MESH_into_an_existing_network) about "Integrating HSMM-MESH into an existing network.

Following the directions, I added 10.0.0.0 to the routing table on my home router, pointing to the local IP address of the node.  I added both of my nodes to the HOSTS file on my pc.

Now, I can successfully ping both of the nodes using both IP addresses and node names (as listed in the host table).

I can connect by name to the node connected to my home net.  However, I still cannot connect to the remote node by name (URL), neither directly from the browser (Firefox), nor from the other node.

I have flushed the DNS cache, restarted Firefox, and rebooted the computer.  While I try to avoid using IE, I suppose I should see if it works from there.

Any one have any other suggestions?

Or can you point me somewhere where I can learn about connecting to a remote printer?

73 de KG1L

Karl